Lychee Hospitality's Four Major Developments: First foray into department store food streets and expansion into frozen food market

▲ Tianxianglou mini offers six selected Hangzhou-style rice and noodle dishes. (Photo / Lychee Hospitality Group)

Reported by Huang Shiyuan / Taipei

What direction should the tourism and hospitality industry take in the future? In response to shifts in traveler demographics and changing domestic dining habits, the Lychee Hospitality Group has proposed four major development plans, including member mechanism integration, deepening of hotel brand identity, venturing into food street dining, and partnering with top-tier supermarkets to enter the frozen food market. The debut of the mini version of Tianxianglou, the hotel’s fine-dining brand, in a department store food court marks the industry’s first such move, while frozen food products are already undergoing market testing.

Spotting the future growth potential of Taiwan’s frozen food market, along with rising domestic demand for food safety and quality, the Lychee Hospitality Group has spent nearly half a year investing in the entire process—from production techniques and flavors to portion sizes and pricing. With a concept centered on single-meal portions and simplified gift box designs, the group is entering the frozen food market. Its first wave features Tianxianglou’s classic signature dish: the Lychee Dongpo Pork Gift Box. In addition to its own channels and platforms, the group has also entered into an exclusive strategic partnership with City Super supermarket. In the future, it plans to collaborate with in-hotel restaurants to offer frozen gift boxes such as French countryside cuisine, pasta, and sauce combinations—like confit duck leg.


▲ Lychee Hospitality Group has specially designed a Hangzhou-style Dongpo pork gift box targeting the frozen food market. (Photo / Lychee Hospitality Group)

Aside from launching frozen products and cross-industry collaborations, its subsidiary, Asia Zhi Catering, continues to actively develop off-premise dining brands. In early March, it broke with traditional hotel-brand department store in-store models for the first time by creating a composite brand booth in the B2 food court of Uni-President Department Store, combining the popular Hangzhou cuisine Tianxianglou mini with Australia’s top-rated natural smoothie brand, Boost Juice Bars. The booth offers six exclusive rice and noodle dishes, including Hangzhou-style Dongpo Pork Scrambled Egg Rice/Noodles, Slow-Braised Lion’s Head Meatball Rice/Noodles, Open Yang Scallion Chicken Leg Stewed Noodles, and Pickled Mustard & Bamboo Shoot Pork Noodles, with single items starting at NT$169.

To strengthen the Lychee Hotel system’s brand and revitalize the membership loyalty program, the Lychee Hospitality Group revamped its website interface last year (2016), while also integrating banquet, catering, and international reservation systems, as well as unifying the membership mechanism. This allows over 160,000 Lychee Friends members to enjoy exclusive benefits and accumulate bonus points when staying at any of the group’s sister hotels across Taiwan. The group expects to add more than 15,000 new members this year.

The Lychee Hotel system has also redefined its brand identities, focusing on three main categories: international tourist hotels, leisure resort hotels, and boutique budget hotels, but with a central emphasis on the Landis brand. In conjunction with the 10th anniversary of HOTEL ONE Taichung Asia Zhi Hotel, its English name has been officially renamed The Landis Taichung, symbolizing the first step in the group’s active development of the Lychee Hotel system’s brand.